14th World Congress of the Fourth International 7 eri-polar domination of the world econom! (United States, Japan, Europe) but also a certain trpe of relationship between the three poles and the structuring by each of them of their own zone of influence. The configuration, however, is not at all harmonious and stable since it is accompanied by tundamental asymmetries. The three major zones vary considerably in their
The Asiatic zone is both the best protected and the best organized. While Japan and Korea are present in all world markets, penetrating their domestic markets is in practice extremely difficult. The organization in concentric circles of the region's economies and the way in which China has taken its place in the set-up provide the ensemble with a formidable economic efficiency and commercial aggressiveness.
Europe differs completely. Here we are dealing with a conglomerate of capitalist Nation-States of comparable rank, which, in addition, is largely open to external competition. Europe is less present in third-party markets and above all has shown itself to be incapable of dynamically structuring its natural periphery, the Mediterranean and castern Europe. As for the United States, its vocation to run the show on the entire American continent was once again reaftirmed by the Treaty signed with Canada and Mexico. But the gap between the development of the North and the South of the continent are too important to go much further than relatively secondary complementarities.
These differences are accompanied by a disproportion in the political functions assumed on the world scale. relationship of forces and the hierarchy of political domination, a complex dialectic has been established. Its latest developments lead to the following remark: the present tendency seems to indicate a re-establishment the politicomilitary as well as economic supremacy of the United States. This movement has taken on the form of an AmericanJapanese condominium due to the Slowing down of the Japanese economy and American technological revival. If the imbalances subsist, this configuration renders plausible the emergence of a Pacific zone which would constitute a dynamic pole in the world economy in the years to come. 2.4 THE CONTRADICTIONS OF BUILDING EUROPE
Europe seems to be the weakest pole in the Triad for reasons that are not simply due to its level of intrinsic economic development. The basic difficulty the European countries have to resolve consists of building something that would tulfil on the European leve. the elementary functions usually reserved for the State. The other poles of the Triad are organized hierarchically around a Nation-State, which still constitutes the base of operation for the dominant groups. The situation is different in Europe particularly since multinational groups there rarely have the vocation of functioning with a specifically European logic. The process of building Europe thus has a different nature than the treaties signed in America and Asia.
This process is a response to clear requirements European bourgeoisies but it is not free from contradictions. The path chosen by the Maastricht Ireaty was perhaps the most rapid. In any case, it was the most constraining. Its failure results from an under-estimation of national economic particularities but, even more so, from the different forms of class social relations in each of the countries that make up the European Union.
This absence of cohesiveness shows up every time Europe comes face to face with the two other imperialist powers. The latest GATT negotiations made it possible to measure to what degree these relations are lacking in symmetry. Europe is the only one to fully play the free trade game. The permeability of its economy weakens it vis-à-vis its competitors. The imperialist condominium is thus potentially a conflicting one by reason of its multiple imbalances. Unless it develops a European "nationalism" which does not correspond to the interests of either the major groups or of the peoples, the European bourgeoisies will be durably exposed to witnessing processes of
Globalization * falling back on more traditional nationalisms. 2.5 THE EAST AND THE SOUTH: SIMILAR INSERTIONS
The very different performances of the various countries of the South and the East do not make it impossible to examine their situation as a whole. One absolutely striking trend is the almost universal choice of an export-driven mode of growth. This convergence is not accidental since these policies have been to a large extent imposed on the countries involved by international institutions like the IMF and the World Bank. As a result, the whole logic of the world economy is based on competition between these countries, on the basis of low wages or other specific advantages, for extremely volatile investments or very unstable markets. This leads to a new form of dependent development, delineating what can be called a neo-
Every country cannot be a winner at this game. The main reason is arithmetic: the capacity of absorption of the imperialist countries is limited compared to the countries of the South and will remain so, as long as they succeed in selling to them by reason of the social effects of such successes. In such a market, the "offerers" that are the lowwage countries are caught in an circular logic which reduces them to their "comparative advantages" which reside above all in their low wages. So this type of configuration is not a model of development. It is very different from the Korean trajectory and it is practically excluded that any new countries will accede, on the basis of the international division of labour, to any complete mastery of industrial sectors. Less systematic successes are not impossible, but they will always be successes against neighbouring competitors.
This evolution is not just a source of inequality and differentiation. It poses a series of supplementary questions: the tendency to produce goods far from the place where they will be consumed is not a new phenomenon, but it now involves much greater quantities of raw materials and commodities. This represents a significant ecological cost, in terms of superfluous consumption of energy, development of road networks, gas emissions, and so on.
Such a model also leads to a degradation of working conditions, security, health and life. There is an increase in workplace accidents and ecological catastrophes. In some cases, factories which pollute or are dangerous are simply transported from the North to the South. So is toxic or radioactive waste.
* Globalization
Alongside their economic protectionism, the rich countries impose protectionism in immigration, which is to a large extent a response to the negative effects of the global system which the se same countries support and develop.
The same considerations are at play in the restoration process going on in the Eastern countries, which are largely overdetermined by the new ordering of the world economy. Far from constituting a new frontier, a limitless zone of expansion for the accumulation capital, the Eastern to a certain degree, a international capital position to take up. The experience of unification is there as living proof: even with a strong political will and enormous financial resources, its assimilation remains a contradictory and difficult process. This would be even more the case for countries too poor or too vast to be assimilated in such a fashion. Here again, the dominant logic is going to consist of choosing among countries those which present a sufficient interest and can, to a certain degree, be agglomerated with capitalist Europe. Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland appear to be the best positioned, which means that other countries will be set aside if not set upon. The Yugoslav precedent is undoubtedly a borderline case, but its internal tensions were clearly reinforced by the differential attraction exerted by Europe on the different components of Yugoslavia. The ex-Soviet Union will have to recover, up to a certain point, its role as an economic centre for countries such as Ukraine, without be able to stabilize at the same time the zones of imbalance or tensions.
The absence of external relays will give the restorationist process a specific colouring, by accentuating the trend to developing a parasitic capitalism that is relative incapable of seizing the reins of any central core of the economy. The specific advantage attributed to the
Eastern countries, in terms of the training and skills of their labour force, have already to a large degree evaporated at the same time as these countries have undergone a very deep process ot social decomposition. The hypothesis of their
"Third-World-ization" is rapidly becoming a reality.
3 THE PRESENT MODE OF
= "m SE OF THE CAPITALIST
O international Viewpoint
ECONOMY 3.1 A REGRESSIVE FUNCTIONING
The recession of the beginning of the 90's presents the proof that neo-liberal solutions do not lead to putting the capitalist economy back on a similar road
No edifying combination between profits and outlets has been able to emerge and the present situation is dominated by a relatively new phenomenon: the conditions for profitability have been re-established but they have been accompanied compromisin evelopment and possibility of sustainable persistence of mass unemployment. Capitalism now looks like what it reall is: a profoundly contradictory system with a concrete mode of functioning that tends to dissociate and even counterpose profits and outlets.
This contradiction takes on the form, today, of a growing inadequacy between what capitalism can and knows how to produce profitably and the most urgent needs of humanity. Ihe enormous gains in productivity, largely accumulated during the expansionary wave, have run into difficulty in finding sectors in which they can be reinvested with the same the displacement of social demand towards goods that no longer make possible such gains in productivity. In other words, the growth of real wages compatible with maintaining the rate of profit is limited by the perspective ot a relative surplus value, such that the combination of the 60's, usually called Fordism, cannot be re-established. This difficulty is regulated in its own way by the logic of capitalism which consists of not producing anything that is not profitable. This is the root of unemployment which has to characterized as a capitalist unemployment. 3.2 A LIMITED LEGITIMACY
The corollary of this analysis is the limited legitimacy of this mode of of capitalism. Without idealizing in hindsight its pertormance, the strength of the capitalist mode ot production was, during its years of expansion, its ability to deal with needs and aspirations within its own logic. It was able to ensure a very sustained development while redistributing, in a relatively egalitarian fashion, the gains of this in terms of increased purchasing power. In any case, it did so sufficiently to give itself the appearance of ethiciency.
As time goes by, it becomes increasingly clear that this period - in the last analysis, a rather short one on the scale of history - was only a quickly closed parenthesis. Capitalism has gone back to ming "normally", , ie. with slower mitted to wildly swinging cycles, with massive and permanent under-employment, and increasing: social insecurity, not to mention a sharpening, on the international level, of the most classical characteristics of combined and uneven development.
The heightening of inequalities is, from now on, and even more so than in the past, a central characteristic of the reproduction of capital including on the international level. The Marxist critique permits understanding why this is so: the growth of inequalities represents the way of adjusting the structure of outlets to the structure of profitable production. The present-dav capitalist vicious circle iterally involves the refusal to produce and the setting aside of entire social layers and populations. The ugly face of severe divisions is part of every social formation. The mechanisms of exclusion function everywhere even if under different modalities. differences of social context, the rise of unemployment in the imperialist countries and the swelling of the informal sector in the dominated countries arise out the same structural determinants. 3.3 AN UNRESTRAINED CAPITALISM